Alaska, Cr-Wikipedia

On May 31st I depart for Alaska. I’ll take the ferry, raft the Copper River, tour Denali Park and visit Anchorage. This weekly blog is the story of my anticipation and planning.

Come June, if I can get to a couple of Internet cafes, I’ll report on what’s happening. For the rest of the summer I’ll tell stories and send photos.

My brother Dave lives in Anchorage where he teaches outdoor education. All my sibs and nephews have been to visit him. My mother’s been three times. Dave’s retiring in a year or so, and he said if I want to come, it had better be now.

A couple of friends want to go and my sister wants to go if we take the ferry. We’ve talked about it for a couple of years. Then this past summer Dave came to St. Louis and stayed at my house while he took a course in national park interpretation.

Dave’s a great story-teller. He had my housemate Roberta on the edge of her seat listening to how Dave and his students made themselves big in the face of a bear and how they scared away a wolf who was habituated to humans.

Dave also tells stories about avalanche training, his attempts to climb Mount McKinley, and getting into frozen boots first thing in the morning. Most of the time I love listening to his stories but I don’t want to do the trips with him. This time he hooked me and Roberta.

Dave says he doesn’t do trips that are fun. He also tries not to do trips that are miserable. He lives for trips that yield great memories – and great stories. He said we could come to Anchorage and hang out. Or we could take the ferry and he’d meet us and take us to Homer and other local sites. And/or we could do some camping. One trip he’d never done that he’d like to do was float the Copper River. It would be five days and it might be five days of rain. It might be hard. But we’d see wild life and beauty and camp on gravel beds by the side of the river.

That was the day we began to plan this trip. Stay Tuned!